


Road Out Of Texas

by palimpsestus



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:01:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes twenty years to travel the road from Texas to Boston. Twenty years of surviving. Twenty years of not wanting to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Year One

There came a time when he regretted washing her blood from his hands, regretted the frantic scrubbing that left his skin raw, that left him weak with tears and fear.

His little niece. Family. Blood. Tommy could still remember holding her as a baby, the tiny little bundle of limbs that squalled and wriggled in his arms. He was so afraid of dropping her that Joel laughed at him and promised he could never hurt her. _She’s your blood, Tommy, you’ll be fine_.

He had put his hand on Joel’s shoulder and pulled _. We have to go. We have to go._ He had been crying too, his hand shaking as his big brother held on when he climbed back to his feet. In the darkness they left her, in a pool of her own blood, fleeing the rattattatt of gunfire that echoed behind the screams.

That first night they sheltered in a gas station, holed up with a small group. No kids. One woman. A small, scared little thing who clung to her weedy boyfriend’s arm as they all watched the barricaded doors. Joel sat with his head in his hands, saying nothing, shedding no tears. Tommy couldn’t stop crying, silent, fat drops sliding down his cheeks.

It was Joel who got them moving in the morning. With the dawn, before their little group was on their feet, Joel took Tommy by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out back. They lifted food, plasters and antiseptics, stuffing them in a plastic carrier bag. The woman watched Tommy leave with wide, mascara rimmed eyes. Tommy often wondered about her, about what became of her.

Joel had them walking, in silence, along the highway. Every so often they passed a car that had driven down an embankment. Tommy only asked if they should investigate once. The highway rolled away from town, the tarmac stretching to the rising sun, and Joel kept them walking.

 

That night they circumnavigated another barricade, leaving the highway behind. It had been a mostly silent walk, trudging foot after foot. They avoided the cars that had torn down the highway and not a single of those cars had even applied the brakes. Tommy didn’t know whether that made him feel better or worse about the first night.

Joel got them into a barn that night. They didn’t approach the house. The next morning they heard howls from farm. Joel had them walk in the other direction.

“Where are we going?” Tommy asked at last when they broke their pace to chew on the last of the jerky. Joel  turned the twisted flesh over between his fingers. “Joel?”

“Somewhere inside a barricade,” Joel said at last. “Somewhere they haven’t written off yet.”

Tommy whistled between his teeth, regretting it because his brother winced at the sound. “You think they wrote us off?” he whispered.

“I think they wrote a lot of us off,” Joel said and bit hard down on the jerky.

 

“Freeze!” By the end of the second day they were staring down gun barrels. They had their hands in the air. Tommy could remember shouting _Freeze_! at his brother before. When they were kids in the yard and the street and the forest, where their playground was a wild west of their making _. Freeze! Hands in the air!_ And then of course _, You didn’t get me I got you!_

Tommy could hear Joel’s teeth grinding as they lifted their hands in the sky. He could hear the ragged breathing of the soldier barring the way to the checkpoint. He could hear, beyond the makeshift barrier, the sounds of people shuffling and sobbing. He looked back to the soldier, wondered when he’d been called back from the East, was it before or after these infections started spreading? Had he shot kids too? “We’re clean,” he said.

“We don’t know that,” said the soldier. He kept the muzzle trained on them as another soldier came closer. All their faces were hidden by gas masks, Tommy realised. He wondered why his own chest felt so tight. Pain, or sickness?

The second soldier approached Joel slowly, regarding the gun held in his outstretched hand. “Put it down, son.”

“Joel,” Tommy whispered.

“Put the gun down, son,” the soldier said again. Unlike his companion, he kept his own hands far from the rifle that hung from his neck. “We’ll take you to a containment facility. We’ll check you for infection. Then you will be safe. You won’t need the gun. Put the gun down.”

Joel’s voice cracked. “You didn’t give us much time before you shot my daughter.”

One soldier looked to the other and then both looked back to the brothers. When they were kids Andy Gilligan used to beat on Tommy for his lunch money. For the first week of elementary school. He’d wait behind the fence and then fall on Tommy like a lion on a gazelle. When Tommy eventually cried before heading out to school, their momma slapped his ass and told him to stand up for himself. Joel walked with him the whole way. When Andy Gilligan appeared round that fence, he met Joel. Joel was a year older than Andy, Joel was bigger. And Joel was meaner.

“I’m real sorry about that,” the soldier said. He still didn’t touch his rifle. “I am real, real sorry about that. Put the gun down.”

“Joel,” Tommy said, half turning to face his brother. “Let’s not . . . write off . . .”

In one quick, sharp jerk, Joel tossed the pistol aside. “We had no bullets left anyway,” he said.

They dropped to their knees to be searched and were then allowed past the plywood boarding, onto a stretch of highway that was covered with small, green tents and school buses packed with people. They were herded together onto one of the school buses, masked soldiers waiting in each like schoolteachers on class trips. Tommy took the window seat, Joel the aisle, and they waited for their bus to fill and finally start up, taking them away.

 

_Now you’re old enough to buy me the beers, Tommy._ There was something collegiate about quarantine. The bunks upon bunks in tents. The first few weeks where newcomers would sometimes go crazy, savaging and drooling. And the way his bunkmate never slept, just sat and stared into the distance.

Sarah. Sometimes Tommy didn’t believe it. He expected to see her playing soccer with the other kids in their camp. He expected to see the golden hair flying in the sunshine as she ran towards Joel, babbling about whatever she had discovered. He expected to hear her complain that Uncle Tommy didn’t pay her enough attention, that he took up too much of her daddy’s time.

One night they heard screams. They weren’t the screams of the sick people, but a woman in fear. The sounds faded quickly. The next morning the guards found a dead woman behind a tent close to the concrete barricades. Her throat was slit. Her dress was ripped. Said those who had seen, there had been a lot of blood. The kids didn’t play soccer so much after that.

The National Guard were delivering their food for the day and Joel approached the Humvee. “When do we get out of here?”

Tommy hadn’t expected it, hadn’t seen it coming. Joel kept talking, big and belligerent, the kind of guy people paid attention to when he started kicking up a fuss. One of the soldiers took Joel aside, and Joel quieted. He returned to Tommy with an extra pack of rations. “What was all that about?” Tommy asked as they headed back to their tent.

“Making connections,” was all Joel would say.

They learned, through trial and error, it was two days from exposure to ‘turning’. The sick people became ‘infected’, or ‘cordys’. Joel became a man who always had a little extra food, and then the man who had a little extra cash, a little extra trinket, a little extra information. Tommy wasn’t sure how it all came about, just that when they were released from the camp, Joel had a motel keycard and a few friends in the National Guard. While the others who were released from the clinic walked into a city that didn’t want them and couldn’t support them, Joel and Tommy walked into a room with four walls and two hard beds.

 

Tommy got work in a market, moving pallets for pittance. Joel didn’t speak about his work, he just came back with money. One of the locals, Emma Reilly, shared fag breaks with him in the parking lot, her high top sneakers scuffed and ripped. She must have been a couple of years younger than him, a would-be rebel with blue streaks in the dirty brown hair she tied up in a ponytail. She wore band t-shirts, Mumford and Sons, The National and The Lumineers. Tommy couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard a song for the first time.

“Do you think the world’s ending?” Emma asked him one night as they puffed smoke into the clouds of fireflies.

“No,” he said automatically.

Emma took a deep drag of her cigarette, watching the stars and the lights of the town. “South side’s going to go out soon,” she said, nodding her head. “Their turn to lose electricity tonight.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Your motel’s there, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Emma dropped the cigarette and ground it into the asphalt with her toe. “You know what I haven’t had in ages?”

“Sex?”

“Lemons.” Emma looped her arm round his neck and planted her smoky lips on his. He tasted whisky on the tip of his tongue, on the back of hers, and he could smell the bitterness of her sweat and his. It had been a few weeks since they got deodorant delivered in the back of a truck. But Emma was right, it had been longer still since they’d seen lemons.

When he returned to the motel he found Joel sitting with a box of Cheerios packets and a miner’s lamp. “Where you been?” Joel asked the moment he slipped through the door.

“Work.”

“Work finished three hours ago.” His older brother looked up at him. Joel was cross legged on the floor, a switchblade and an orange in his hands. He watched Tommy linger by the door. “So where were you?”

Fucking a twenty something on the back of the Camaro.  “I was at work. Where the hell were you?” he kicked the Cheerios box as he walked. “Where do you find this shit?”

“Three hours, Tommy. Where the hell were you?”

“I was at work,” he said again, but he held up his hand before Joel could interrupt, “with a girl. Emma.”

Joel slid the point of his knife under the pith of the orange, flicking white threads over the carpet. “You need to come home when your shift is over, Tommy. I need to know where you are. We might have to leave on short notice.”

“I ain’t your fucking-” and Tommy bit down on his words so hard he made his tongue bleed. He swore and kicked the desk, rattling the empties balanced between the mirror and the wardrobe. Dabbing his knuckles against his mouth, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror, scarlet dripping down his hand.

“You ain’t my fucking what, Tommy? I’ll tell you what you are. You’re my kid brother and when I say we’re leaving town, we are leaving town.” Joel got to his feet and tossed him half the orange. “The infection’s getting closer.” Joel flipped the blade back into its sheath and lay down on his bed. Tommy let the juice of the peeled orange mix with the blood on his hand, watching his brother pretend to sleep.

Joel rolled up to the quik-mart only a few weeks later in a battered Hilux with suitcases and crates and a shotgun strapped to the back of the cab. Emma watched him from behind her till, her eyes wide as he apologised to the super and hopped into the cab.

He didn’t ask her to come. Joel didn’t offer.

 

The day of their momma’s funeral they both took a side of the coffin. He remembered seeing Joel’s hand on the wood, gold band on his finger, calluses on the pad of his thumb. _Never thought I’d fucking miss her._

_No. Me neither._

_She was momma, right?_

_Right._

_Would it be wrong to piss on the grave?_

_Wrong._

_Damn it. You remember that New Year’s party?_

_Not much of it._

_Remember when she found us on the first, under the tree house?_

_I started in the tree house._

_So did I._

_You remember what she said about us?_

_Yep._

_Do you think she hated us?_

_What?_

_Do you?_

_No. No she didn’t hate us. She didn’t hate you._

_No?_

_No, Tommy. She just . . . wasn’t good at that stuff. She was never that good at that stuff._

_Do you worry you’re going to be like that? With Sarah?_

_No._

_That’s cause you’re good at this stuff._

_Fuck off._

 

By August they were working as ranch hands on a farm in Kansas. Tommy drove the tractors and Joel patrolled the perimeter. Every few weeks an infected would stray too close. Joel, or one of his taciturn men, would deal with it. Tommy would sit in the kitchen with Darla and Howie Mikkelson and the other harvest workers, watching the satellite feed from around the world.

They were giving up on the world, Tommy thought, watching Manchester burn and Hong Kong trial quarantine zones.

“Soviets,” Howie announced one night. “I think it was the Soviets.”

Tommy thought he remembered something about that, something about a dead man’s switch and Russia wanting to fire the last shot if there was nothing left on earth. He was shaking so bad he had to run to the porch, his stomach roiling.

Joel was sitting on the porch swing, a guitar in hand, his fingers still on the strings. “Something up?”

Tommy’s braced himself on the rail, watching the fireflies dancing above the corn. “I think it’s the end of the world,” he murmured.

Joel tapped his fingers against the fret, a dull thud thumping with Tommy’s heart. “I can’t remember Sarah’s favourite song,” he said.

Tommy felt the queasiness return. “She liked that . . . what was it?” But he couldn’t think of a single song. 


	2. Year Two - Construction

“I’m sorry but I have no record of Digitalis Construction.”

One quarter of the bank had been roped off, the marble floor stained and chipped from the desks that had been hauled over. Tommy could see seven identical desks and seven identical insurance brokers. And he could see six other schmucks thinking they might just get their money back. “You were our insurer,” Tommy said carefully, flattening his palms on the thighs of his dirty jeans. “You insured our company. How can you have no record of us?”

The pale, bespectacled man barely looked up at him. He continued clicking away at his laptop. “Perhaps if you had a bank statement, or-”

“I told you already, our town burned.” Tommy clasped his hands and pressed his knuckles against his lips, praying for strength. “I don’t even own these clothes.”

“Do you have a utility bill?”

“Why the fuck would I pick up a utility bill as I run for my fucking life?” he spat.

This earned him a look from the broker. “Sir,” he said mildly.

Tommy could feel his throat swelling closed, his gorge rising. “We got nothing. I ain’t got a house. I ain’t got a company. I ain’t got a niece anymore, you understand me? Now we drove all the way to Bellville because we heard you was in town and now you’re telling me that you got no record of us. I want to tell you. Fuck your records and give me my money.”

As the National Guard showed him the door, he heard his broker say “have you checked Facebook, Dan? They say they’re pulling out of Denver!”

The guards escorted him to the street where he took a deep breath of the cold, biting February air. Both ends of the high street were piled high with sandbags, soldiers in face masks and grubby uniforms patrolling the borders. Tommy puffed warm air onto his hands and crossed the road, passing a Prius that had lost its wheels. Joel was waiting in the diner, like he’d said he would. He had a coffee and a waitress trying to make him smile. He watched Tommy’s approach with something approaching a ghoulish grimace of a smile. “We got nothing?”

“We got fucking nothing.” Tommy kicked the stool beside Joel. The waitress scowled. “Why the hell did we come here?”

“Because you kept saying we had to,” Joel said. He folded a paper over and slid it over the countertop. “They decided to pull out of Denver.”

“Coffee,” Tommy said to the waitress. He retrieved his stool and sat down again. “That’s our money,” he said, more to himself than to Joel. “I mean, there’s a god damned internet. There are records. The insurance policy isn’t gone just because the town burned.”

“How long do you think it took those poor bastards in New Orleans to get their payments?” Joel asked him. He tapped two fingers on the paper’s headline. “You see this, Tommy? The government is pulling out of Denver.”

“So fucking what?”

Joel pressed his fingers against his jaw and swirled his coffee in his cup with his other hand. “I want to go north.”

“You think our money’s north?”

“I think . . .” Joel broke off and finished his coffee. “I got a few things I need to do in town. Will you be here?”

Tommy waved him off and pulled the paper closer. It was thin and the ink rubbed off on his fingers. He glanced at the front page and flicked to the sports. There was half a paragraph about a college game and an advert for shotguns. That was all.

“He’s the real friendly type, isn’t he?” the waitress said.

“Yeah,” Tommy muttered. He pushed his cup toward her. “Can I get a refill?”

“Sorry, hon, we’re rationing.”

Tommy rubbed the ink off his palms and onto the counter. “Figures.”

 

On the news the houses were daubed with crosses. Tommy watched the hazmat suited soldiers painting their codes on doors and over lintels. Date on top, number of dead and alive on the bottom. When Tommy walked the streets of Bellville he pictured those scarlet crosses on the white boards of the houses.

_Cass is pregnant_. They sat on the porch together. Two brothers with two bottles of beer, a sunset splashing orange on the street, the neighbour washing his car across the road. From inside the house, their momma coughed her death rattle.

_What are you gonna do?_

_I’m gonna marry her._

_You know this isn’t the nineties anymore, right?_

_It’s still the right thing to do, Tommy. I got her pregnant._

_There are other options._

_Tommy . . . just don’t._

Tommy walked on by those picture perfect little houses. He thought of Emma back in Texas, particularly when he talked to the waitress at the diner, and thought about the farm they left in Kansas whenever he heard of an outbreak on the news. He picked up bits of work here and there, protecting the brokers mostly. He thought they were doing it to throw him a bone. Joel did what Joel did, and came home with money and dark thoughts.

One morning, not a morning Tommy was standing outside the bank, armoured trucks screeched through the high street and left black skid marks on the road in front of bank. The brokers left in double file, carrying their laptops and their duffel bags. They were packed inside and the cars drove off, all in the space of time it took Alice to pour him a coffee.

“Shit,” Alice said softly.

It was the Morrisons on Kanter Place. After the dust settled it looked as though the husband had been keeping the wife for days. Then he got sick and the family got sick and they tore from their picture-perfect little house and into the rest of the homes on Kanter Place. The little boy ran down the street, his mutated face screaming and hollering.

Their barricade of sandbags felt suddenly fragile and Tommy took a step back. It was no consolation that half their put-together militia did the same. Joel raised the shotgun and fired, sending the kid tumbling backwards. Someone screamed, piercing their eardrums in the night. Then it was Morrison senior, pouncing from a garage roof and landing on one of the kids. Tommy shot too this time. Their militia tried but by morning they had abandoned Kanter Place. Joel took a truck from the back of the diner and didn’t seem to understand why Tommy wanted to stay.

 

It was her birthday. Snow was falling in long spirals over the hillsides. Thirteen years ago today he’d been sitting in a hospital parking lot, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, staring up at the building lit against the night _. Are we going or what?_

_In a moment, Momma._

_Hah._ His mother had turned her head away and stared at nothing. She was thin and frail by now, her eyes sunken in her sallow skin. _She’s not going to want to see us._

_Momma, you be nice,_ he’d warned, twisting the key in the ignition and stilling the engine. _She just had a baby._

_I know what that’s like._

_Well then you know she’s going to be tired._

_I know that little bitch is going to get up and leave one day. Mark my words. She’s not the type to change diapers._

And thirteen years later, Tommy wondered if the old creature had cursed them that night. He sat in the truck, engine off to save the fuel, watching his brother sitting at the viewpoint. So many people had taken this road in the last nine months that the viewpoint was littered with food packages and plastic bags. It reminded Tommy of the adverts he used to see when he was a kid.

His hands were cold. Only a year ago he’d have thought nothing of turning on the air-con. Today he sat on them, wishing they could get a move on.

Cass left only a few years later. He could still picture his brother standing in the kitchen with Sarah perched on the counter. While Joel cleaned her grazed knee he teased her about not knowing the words to her favourite song. When Joel got around to dabbing her knee with iodine she had her head tossed back and was merrily singing gibberish to Eminem’s “Just Lose It”.

Tommy coughed and cleared his throat, blinking at the bright snow that lay on the ground. He could hear “ha ha ha!” being squealed through the old kitchen.

_How you coping?_

Ah. Joel was still watching his little girl tearing through the garden, knee forgotten about. _You do what you can._

_If I can help . . ._ Tommy shrugged.

Out on the viewpoint, Joel reached inside his coat. He held something small and black in his hand, regarded it for a while. Tommy felt his heart crack apart and he clutched at the wheel.  If their positions were reversed, Joel would leave the cab, would approach him, would wrestle the gun from his fingers, would drag him onwards.

He knew that at some point in the last year Joel had called Cass. Had told her. Where Cass was or what she thought of the news, Tommy had no idea. If Joel pulled the trigger, Tommy wasn’t sure who he would ever call.

And yet his hands wouldn’t leave the wheel, his soul seemed rooted to the spot, watching for Joel’s next move. He wondered if somewhere out there, Cass was holding a gun too.

After another minute, Joel put the gun away. After twenty, he returned to the truck. Tommy turned the key in the ignition and they drove on, silent as the snow that fell.

 

“Damn it,” Joel said, like he’d forgotten to bring home milk with the groceries.

Tommy regarded the row of houses, each with FEMA marks, each with warnings against looters, and felt his gorge rising. “I thought Indianapolis was supposed to be safe?”

Kicking a burned out tin across the road, Joel snorted. “I doubt it. Maybe we ought to head back.”

“We’re here now, ain’t we?” Tommy took a garden path, crushed shells breaking under his feet, the grass encroaching on what had been a well-tended lawn.

“Careful,” Joel called after him. Tommy raised a hand in acknowledge and tried the front door. The jam was busted and it swung open on silent hinges. Tommy stepped over the threshold into what he hoped was not human shit. Blood was smeared on the walls, a spray of shotgun pellets embedded into the flowery wallpaper above the mantle in the living room.

The kitchen, an old farmhouse style affair, had been ransacked long ago. A can of beans had been cooked on the hob, soot blackening the outsides. “How do people turn to this?”

Joel returned from the stairs and frowned hard. “Easily,” he said. “Come on. Next house.”

Three houses with varying levels of food and destruction. On the fourth door someone had painted a crudely drawn woman bent double and a troupe of men. Tommy wiped his mouth, unwilling to go further. “You think this happens easy?”

“Ssh.” Joel wasn’t even looking. He stared down the street, his brow lowered, the barrel of his gun twitching upwards. “Get down!” he hissed, dropping behind a pinto. Tommy moved at the same time as a bullet spat dirt out behind him. He swore, or screamed, and dove to Joel’s side.

“Hey!” Joel hollered, one hand gripping Tommy’s shoulder. “We ain’t here for your food. Let us go, we leave and never come back!”

“Bullshit!” And another bullet pinged off the pinto’s hood. Tommy could feel the sweat chilling against his spine.

“Well I warned you,” Joel muttered, far too quietly for the distant antagonist to hear. He sprinted to the next car, leaving Tommy huddled behind the pinto. The shotgun bucked in his hands and Tommy heard a yelp from the far side of the street.

“Fucker’s shooting!”

“What did you expect, dickass? Shoot back!”

Tommy huddled against the rear wheel and waited for Joel to return, walking tall down the street, a rucksack dangling from his hand. “We’re leaving.”

 

The captain glanced again at the CV he’d scratched out on a notepad. “This could all be made up,” he said.

Tommy gritted his teeth. “Well if I’d typed it, I could have made it up too.”

The captain picked up his mug and swallowed down a gulp of chicory. “Look, son, I got a lot of people wanting on this job.”

“We’re contractors,” Tommy repeated. “Look. We know how to build walls.”

“Not like this you don’t,” the captain muttered. From outside the office the sounds of raucous laughter met his ears. The captain glanced at the window, his brows furrowing. When he returned his attention to Tommy, it was with a mind already on other matters. “Come back next week. We still have no work orders.”

_But you’re building your walls already_ , Tommy didn’t say, _and we’re starving_. The foundations were being laid even as they spoke. Chicago’s towers were not going sing in the wind for much longer. Instead of arguing, Tommy folded up the ragged piece of paper he had written his life upon and tucked it into his breast pocket. The soldiers in the yard were unpacking a crate, one of them handing out cigars. They were still laughing, completely heedless of Tommy as he passed them.

It didn’t surprise Tommy to find Joel outside the compound. “Any luck?” Joel asked.

“Not yet.”

“Well maybe tomorrow.” Joel pointed across the street to where a man was sitting in a flatbed truck. “Come on. Meet Bill. He’s, uh . . . helpful.”

“Helpful, huh?” Tommy kicked at the kerb, aware that the newcomer was watching him with narrowed eyes. “Well. There’s a first time for everything, right?”

“Right,” Joel agreed. For a moment Tommy thought Joel was going to grab his shoulder. He tensed, wondering if he could bring himself to tolerate that, or if he might just cry, but Joel walked across the road without a second look at his brother. With the moment safely passed, Tommy followed along behind, his handwritten CV safely tucked away.  


	3. Years Four and Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nuclear summers in Chicago, keeping warm between the sheets.

“Chicago is experiencing its worst winter in living memory-”

“Turn it off,” Tommy muttered, rolling over and burying his face in the curls and tangles of hair. He pulled the body beside him closer, hoarding her heat under the duvets and blankets.

“I’m listening,” she chided.

“Why bother?” He puffed out a strand of her hair and lifted his head, the biting cold attacking the skin he exposed to the air. “They all say the same thing.” The candle was near burned out, the wick sputtering in time to the radio’s crackles. The boards pinned across the windows were caulked with old curtains and plaster but still let in enough of that howling wind to freeze water if it was left in a glass overnight. He couldn’t say how much he missed Dallas.

“Tommy?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re letting all the heat out.”

He kissed his companion on the cheek and grabbed his pants and shirt from the rug. He dressed hurriedly under the covers and braved the cold like plunging into a river. He was quick to pull on socks and boots, his teeth clacking against each other as he fumbled for a sweater and a coat. His erstwhile companion watched from the seclusion of their little nest. He switched off the radio as he left and ignored her protest. His footsteps were heaving on the stairs he descended in darkness. His breath came in big, grey clouds until he entered a room filled with braziers and generators. The radio was on down here too, the voice detailing the losses suffered in Los Angeles.

People ate or talked, a card game was going on in one corner, a woman strummed a guitar for some kids in another. A fragment of her song reached his ear as he walked by and it plucked his memories for some reason he didn’t understand. _Wolf mother, where you been? You look so worn, so thin. You’re a taker, a devil’s maker, let me hear you sing._

There was warmth in living together. Warmth and knowledge that you wouldn’t be found in spring, frozen in place, spores clawing out your eyes. Our walls are high and strong. Our walls are thick and solid. Except in the places they had made them thin and made them crack. Where Joel was today, Tommy didn’t know. His brother would return.

A woman was sitting on a faded red sofa nestled between two oil radiators plugged into a winding extension cable that led to their larger generator outside. She was bundled in coats and reading a book, her pencil going to scratch notes in the margins whenever her lips pursed. “Good reading?” Tommy asked as he made space beside her.

Marlene shrugged, or perhaps simply shifted her weight under all the bulk. “Warfare,” she teased, placing her book away. “It’s a cold one,” she said, lifting her gaze to the dark ceiling. “People will die tonight.”

Tommy held his hands out to the radiator.

“That doesn’t upset you?” she pressed.

“Don’t reckon I can do much about it,” he muttered, rubbing his cold, chapped fingers against his callused palms.

“I reckon we can all do something about it,” Marlene said in her calm, impassable way.

Tommy grunted. He wondered why he brought himself into these discussions, why he allowed her to start them.  Probably something to do with her thick, ebony hair, her sparkling eyes, the curve of her lips as she watched him sulk and the way he couldn’t decide whether she liked him better than Joel or not. “What exactly were you Before, anyway?” he asked, rubbing his hands together.

Marlene reached forward to draw his cold fingers into her lap. She smiled at him as she ran her hands over his, her skin softer than his, but not by much. “I . . . I was a junior at Brown,” she sighed so heavily she rustled her crown of hair.

“You’re older than I thought,” he said, but he ran some mental arithmetic. This was the winter of 2017 now, the walls had been up for a full year.

“Thank you, I think,” Marlene retorted.

“What did you study?”

“I majored in civil liberties in with a minor in world politics.” Her eyes sparkled more warmly and her fingers tightened on his. “I think it was pretty useful actually.” At that, Tommy laughed. His sharp cackle startled Marlene into dropping his hands from her warm grasp. She frowned at him. “I’m serious. I researched an essay on the impact of famine on social units and shared ethics!”

Tommy shook his head. “Oh yeah? What was your dissertation on?”      

“I was in junior year, idiot, I hadn’t written it yet.”

“Sorry,” he offered, but he didn’t think she believed him. “Look. It’s not as though you can build walls.”

Marlene folded her arms and shifted slightly further down the sofa. “Dave Carrerra’s teaching me to shoot,” she said, tilting her chin.  

“Great,” Tommy drawled.

“Just watch, Tommy,” Marlene said, clasping her book against her chest and rising from the sofa, taking precious heat with her. “The world’s gonna need people who can roll a hard six.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Tommy said as she left. He watched her circle the room, squeezing the shoulder of a friend, laughing at a cop’s joke, listening to the guitar with the children. Abruptly he wanted Joel to walk in the door, carrying some treat they hadn’t seen for months, like bananas or apples, twinkies or Root Beer. Marlene would fade when Joel was in the room, unsure of how to deal with him. He wouldn’t respond to her smiles, nor her hardness. Joel would respond to none of them. He would have no friends, only people who wanted something.

And Tommy could want something too.

 

* * *

 

 

“I need a favour.”

Joel glanced up from his beer and snorted. “When do you not?”

Tommy hesitated at the doorway, this was not how the conversation began in his imaginings. He drummed his fingers off the frame, bracing against the chill in the air and the chill between them. “Who pissed in your bottle?”

Joel ignored this and hunched down over the table, his shoulders drawing up. The old, familiar screams started to bubble inside Tommy’s chest and he clamped down on them, breathing through his mouth.

“Are you fucking Marlene?” he asked, his voice harsher than he expected. Joel even looked at him, eyebrows raised over narrowed eyes. Joel rolled his beer bottle between his palms, watching his younger brother. At last he sat back, his chair groaning with the shift of weight.

“If I say ‘yes’, what are you going to do?”

 _I’d shoot you right here_. Tommy clenched his fists and bit his lip. “Can’t you just answer me?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Cause it’s not your damned business!” Joel raised eyebrows at his baby brother. “Why, is she fucking you too?”

For a moment, with a clarity that made him doubt what was reality and what was fantasy, Tommy pictured himself squeezing his finger on the gun. The cold resistance of the trigger biting into his skin, his wrist aching as it jumped in his hand, his brother falling to the ground. And then Tommy would turn the gun on himself, against his temple, and join his brother and his niece in blissful oblivion.

What stopped him? Care for bullets? Care for a brother?

Joel saw something in his face and began to apologise, but Tommy raised a hand. “Whatever, Joel. Fucking whatever. Take what you want, like you always do. You realise you can’t get anything over me anymore, right? We are all fucked.” And before Joel could protest, Tommy left.

 

* * *

 

 

“He is still your brother.”

Tommy closed his eyes. He wanted, badly wanted, a beer. Or even a glass of cheap, cardboard carton eggnog, the kind his momma used to get from the 7/11. It would have been festive enough. He thought of dry turkey and overcooked sprouts, soggy carrots and lumpy mash. He thought about Sarah, unwrapping a present and beaming up at him, Joel laughing in the background.

Marlene placed her hand on the small of his back. She rubbed gently. “Tommy . . .”

“Don’t,” he said. He didn’t know why he’d brought her here, why he’d pursued so aggressively. Maybe he’d thought . . . God he wanted a beer.

Marlene rested her cheek on the back of his shoulder, her breasts pressed up against his back, her hands curling around his chest. “We feel . . . what we feel. It makes us human. It separates us from the infected. It-”

“Marlene,” he snapped, jerking away. “I ain’t in the mood.”

“Hmm,” she said, nestling under the duvets and preserving warmth. “I didn’t sleep with you to get at Joel, Tommy. And I didn’t sleep with you to let you get at him.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Her fingernails gently stroked the skin at the top of his buttocks. He wished she wouldn’t touch him. He wished he hadn’t touched her. He wished he could find an escape, somewhere, anywhere, anyone. “People respect you, Tommy. Maybe even more than they respect Joel. You don’t get that. Yet. Maybe one day you will.”

Tommy fell back against the pillows and turned his head away from her. “Was that why you slept with me?” he asked.

Marlene’s fingers withdrew.

 

* * *

 

That summer was a cold and rainy season. Someone said it was because there was a nuclear winter in China, that their power stations had finally gone nova, and that the world would be blanketed in ash like the dinosaurs. Someone else said this was just what a summer in Chicago was like. Tommy just thought rain was better than snow, and he made a good trade for a light waterproof coat he could wear while salvaging wood from the junkyard.

He was whistling to himself as he worked, searching for wood un-warped and still strong enough to be repurposed, when he heard the notes in a husky, but not unpleasant voice.

He still laid his hand on his knife as he looked to the newcomer. The redhead had her hair falling down her shoulders in a curling, tangled bush. It was the first thing Tommy noticed. The overt display of femininity spoke volumes about her toughness. Somehow, he didn’t think his knife would help.

“You’re Tommy, right?” she asked, raising her hands in a friendly show of peace.

“Yeah?”

“I hear you got a brother.” She stood with her weight resting on one hip, a smirk crossing her lips. “I hear he might be able to help me with a . . . little problem I’ve got.”

“You might be better finding him yourself,” Tommy said, turning back to his work. “We don’t speak.”

The redhead nodded. “Yeah, I can believe that. But I bet he still watches, huh?” When he looked at her she gave him another friendly smile. “So, uh, do I have to threaten you or will you find him for me?”

He hefted the saw in his hand and eyed the distance between them.

“Don’t think about it, honey,” she said, not without sympathy. So Tommy laid down his tools and led her through the streets and the rain. She didn’t seem too bothered by walking beside the cops or showing her face on the streets, but she skirted the sidewalks near the taller buildings. Well Tommy had seen that masonry fall himself, he wasn’t too fond of walking near the uninhabited buildings himself.

But when he reached their squat, he found himself hesitating. This was the silent bargain he and Joel had somehow struck. That he would work the days and Joel the nights and they’d share their space in time only. His redheaded friend cleared her throat and together they walked inside the warehouse, where a few people were lingering in the common areas, a few people standing in line for bowls of noodles, some people talking, some people sitting in silence,

And Joel and Marlene. Sitting together on the faded red sofa. Marlene half in his lap.

“That’s the one?” The redhead asked, following his gaze. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” he managed, his voice cracking. The redhead gave him a ‘tough luck, kid’ shrug, and sauntered forward. Tommy waited just long enough to be seen, to throw Joel off his game as this needy stranger approached, before he walked away.

Whatever the redhead wanted, it was clearly important enough to keep Joel from coming after his baby brother.

Or maybe he just didn’t care. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the very long delay - but I do have to say I think this was my game of the year - unless Broken Sword narrowly edges in at the end. Happy Christmas y'all!


	4. Year Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy takes on some work for the Fireflies, and his brother rarely sees him any more.

“You, my beautiful man, are a sight for sore eyes.”

Tommy laughed at the voice and jumped from his sofa, rising to greet Tess with a kiss on the cheek and a quick embrace. “Damn, girl, it’s been too long.” He held her at arm’s length, scrutinising those high cheekbones, sparkling eyes, and sardonic smile. A little knocked about, maybe, but still breathing. Eighteen months ago he’d wondered if he’d ever see her again.

“What, nothing for me?” The second figure crossing his threshold was a little more reserved, but still smiling. Tommy hesitated, but only long enough to notice that Joel still had all his limbs. If anything, his brother had bulked up since leaving Chicago. Tommy embraced him too, though not for so long, and stepped back to look at both of them.

“Did all go well?”

Joel and Tess eyed each other and split, Tess approaching the windows, Joel scouting the far wall and the shelves. “We did what Marlene wanted,” Joel said, and Tess snorted. She was inspecting the city, her fingers pressed gently against the greasy glass.

“We weren’t sure if you succeeded,” Tommy announced. He headed for the stove to stir the coals and kindle the fire. He poured water from a jerry can into the pan on top. “The radio transmissions from Connecticut are still down.”

Again Joel and Tess looked at one another. Joel took Tommy’s place on the couch and stretched out with a bone weary slowness. “We did what Marlene wanted, Tommy. Our mission was successful.”

Damn that woman. Tommy thought once more about the Fireflies and their mercurial Chicago leader. “If that wasn’t what you were sent to do we’ve wasted a hell of a lot of time scanning radio frequencies for a transmission that wasn’t ever coming,” he said.

Tess clucked her tongue. “I’m sure somebody _was_ sent to fix the radio.”

“It just wasn’t us,” Joel said. “I don’t suppose you found any coffee while we were gone.”

At that, Tommy laughed. “No, but I can boil you up some chicory and cinnamon. Once you get past the grainy texture, it’s almost like drinking a Starbucks.”

“Spare me,” was Tess’s only comment.

Tommy busied himself with the coal stove, prying the lid from a Nescafe tin, the contents of which was brown, grainy and pungent, but nothing like real coffee. Part of him still desperately wanted to ask what the pair had been up, what Marlene had charged them with, but experience was a good teacher. He stirred chicory mix into three mugs.

“What have we missed?” Tess asked. She pointed to the south side of the city. “I see that office came down.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” he nodded. “Came down with a mighty crash too. Few folks lost their lives.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Tess said, her voice low and soft. “Much in the way of salvage?”

“Not much.” Tommy brought her a mug and then handed another to Joel. He returned to the stove and leaned against the well, appreciating the warmth and the company. “Ollie got a Rhea pregnant. Little girl.” After a few moments of the sounds of slurping chicory echoing around the peeling wallpaper, Tommy continued. “Marlene tamed herself a captain in the National Guard.”

“Now that’s interesting,” Joel announced. “Who’s that then?”

“Ashley.” Tommy swirled the dregs of his drink around in the base of his tin mug. “It’s a lot easier to get to the east sector these days.”

“Good to hear,” Tess agreed. She scratched at her head, pulling a twig from her curls and dropping it to the floor. “Don’t suppose anyone’s found any hot water since we’ve been gone?”

Tommy smiled. “No, but we got black bucket showers on the roof. Gets luke warm in the evening.”

Tess clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes ceiling-wards. “Never thought I’d miss wet wipes,” she said, handing Tommy back her mug. “I’ll leave you two to play nice, huh?”

Tommy shot her a look, mirrored by his brother, and Tess simply waved her fingers and gave them a sunny smile, heading for the roof. By the time she reached the door, Joel was stretched out on the sofa, eyes closed, hands clasped behind his head. Asleep. Or pretending to keep Tommy from talking.

 

It turned out that life with Joel back in town was very similar to life with Joel missing and presumed criminal. Except occasionally Tommy would return to his apartment to find a box of apples or a new coat sitting on his couch. Occasionally he would meet Tess out on the street, in places that he had to suspect Tess knew he would be. She would tell him how Joel was, what Marlene was asking of him, and she’d pry into how he was doing. Tommy didn’t doubt these messages would be relayed back to Joel in time.

He worked. He picked up the jobs he could. When the jobs slowed he sat around the braziers and drank chicory brew with other men and women, and food took the place of the coats that would appear on his sofa.

 One evening, when the coals were glowing low in the tin can, a figure approached the light, her glittering eyes fixed on him. Tommy began shaking his head before she spoke. “Marlene, I ain’t interested.”

This made her laugh. She nodded ‘hello’ to a few friends and pulled up a crate, holding her hands out to the warmth. “I need people,” she said to the crowd. “We have a . . . a package. We need it to get out of the city. You know what the Guard are like.”

A few of those around the fire began muttering and nodding. Tommy groaned. “Oh don’t be pulled in,” he said to his neighbour. “She wants us to run interference by all leaving the city at the one time. Remember the last time you pulled this, Marlene?”

“Yes.” She looked him in the eye. He remembered those eyes in the dark, under the covers, the way her tone could jump from teasing to serious in the skip of a heartbeat. “We lost Cole. I know it. I know I take the responsibility for that. This . . . plague on us. It doesn't just infest our bodies. It takes our souls. It eats away at our history, at our knowledge, at everything that makes us people. Cole died for us.”

“Like Jesus?” Tommy asked. A few people glared at him.

Marlene continued, as if he hadn't spoken. “It was a horrible death. It was a hard death. It hurts. It hurts me. But you know what? Indianapolis got those flu vaccines. Indianapolis is still there. Because of what Cole did.”

Holly, a heavy set woman with a tattoo along her knuckles, raised her hand. “I’m in, Marlene.”

A chorus of similar statements went round, and Tommy knew his voice was one of them. He waited as long as was polite and left the group, unsurprised when Marlene followed him, their footsteps echoing under the flyover that once carried thousands of people.

“Joel and Tess will have the real package,” Marlene said.

Tommy shoved his hands deep in his pockets, refusing to look back at her. “I don’t want to know.”

“It’s guns, Tommy. Guns and data. For my Firefly friends in Boston.” She drew level with him, a smirk on her lips. “We’re building something. Do you think the National Guard is building?”

He moved his arm before she could link elbows with him. “I hear your broadcasts, Marlene.”

“You are much less fun when Joel’s in town, have I told you that?”

“A couple of times.”

She succeeded in slipping her arm through the crook of his and leaning her body against his as they walked. “I miss you, Tommy. You know Joel’s useful to me. But so are you.”

He spat. “Yeah. Have you ever noticed I’m only useful to you when Joel’s around to turn you down?”

Marlene chuckled, not with any great mirth, and leaned her head against his shoulder as they walked. “I’ll never understand you two. I could live a hundred years and I will never understand you two. You’re supposed to be brothers.”

Tommy said nothing. They went back to his squat, Marlene removed her clothes and let them fall to the floor in an artful display of her power. She strutted towards the bed, hair caressing the bare skin between her shoulder blades. Tommy’s lips felt dry and papery as he touched her, his heart was beating hard enough for his fingertips to throb, and he followed her to the bed willingly.

 

The day he left Chicago a cold white frost clung to the ground. He was to take the exit through the wall at Willowbrook and head south to what had been Springfield, or as near to Springfield as a few days walk would take him.  There he would rendezvous with a friend of Marlene’s, he would recognise them by the Firefly symbol. He would exchange information and return to Chicago. Marlene would expect to see him back next week. If not, she’d begin to worry. She’d told him her plans when they were both naked, curled around each other, and both clinging to the semblance of honest between them.  Of course he wasn’t bearing the package. He had no doubt of who really was.

Speak of the devil. He had barely finished packing when the door to his stolen apartment opened and Tess walked through. She took one look at the rucksack he had and the bare shelves on his walls and whistled low through pursed lips. “This isn’t quite what I expected to see.”

Tommy glanced up from his bag and then around the room. These familiar walls with their flaking paint and racketing windows. “I’ve been squatting here three years, Tess,” he said. “It’s time for me to move on.”

She sighed and approached, perching on the bed beside his bag, looking up at him through surprisingly long eyelashes. She’d always struck him as a beautiful woman, if Amazonian in nature. He often wondered what she and Joel did together, how much was between them. He reached for the pillow and stuffed it into the rucksack, pulling hard on the drawstring. Tess folded her arms and hunched forwards, chewing on her bottom lip. “Joel and I . . . well . . . me mostly, Joel too . . . all I mean is we’re both thinking the same thing. This city’s too cold.”

Tommy  crouched beside her, tilting his head so he could scrutinise her face through curling hair. “You know you don’t have to hold the two of us together, right?”

She laughed, loudly, with tears in her eyes. He reached for her clenched hands and she held on to him tightly, her fingernails cutting into his skin. “I wouldn’t dare,” she whispered. “Be careful out there, Tommy. From both of us.”

“Yeah,” he said, squeezing back. “You too, okay? Both of you.”

With this, Tess nodded and said goodbye. They left the apartment within minutes of one another, and for Tommy’s part at least, he had no intention to return.

In Springfield he met with Gregory Marchant, as planned. It was only his bad luck that he met Gregory with a bullet in right leg and none in his gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long - the next chapter to follow very soon I hope.


	5. Year Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing ever really changes, and no one ever gets free, you only hurt in different ways.

“How’s the leg?”

In response Tommy raised his middle finger in the general direction of Gregory. He let his binoculars hang on the strap around his neck and reached for his flask, his shoulder joint popping and cracking at the unexpected movement. “No one out here but ghosts,” he said as the old man joined him on the wall. “And the leg’s fine, thanks for asking.” He rapped, gently, on the bandage around his thigh to prove his point.

The pines outside their walls rattled in the wind, green spines falling to the carpet of dead leaves and detritus that made the forest such a dangerous place. It was a world where shambling infected could get close, silent until that crack of a misstep, and then death fell upon you. Tommy and the others in the camp kept a regular watch on the walls, made more difficult as their numbers dwindled.

Gregory sighed, his breath misting in the cool air. He planted his hands on his hips and scanned the treeline. “I know it’s selfish,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper, “but I’ll rest easier when Maria’s back.”

Tommy shrugged, fingering a rough weld on his flask. “That’s a father’s prerogative, Greg. I’m keeping an eye out for her.”

Gregory smiled and clapped a hand on his shoulder. All the same, he couldn’t tear his eyes from the trees. “Well, you might need to take a break, son. The Great Witch of the North has finally sent for you. There’s a man waiting for you in the camp.”

“A man?” Tommy sat straighter. His gunshot leg, still twinging with infection, sent needles of pain into his hip that made him grimace and grit his teeth.

“Steady, son.” Gregory helped him to his feet. “Marlene’s waited this long for you, she can wait a few more days.” He grey brows furrowed and he set his blue eyes on Tommy. “You know, we’ve got a place for you here. I’d be hell of a sorry to see you leave. I hope I wouldn’t be overstating the point if I say I think Maria might feel the same.”

“Ach.” He looked down at the arrangement of tents and shacks that had housed him for the last six months, since the infection in his leg had become too persistent to ignore. He half expected to see Joel standing there, tapping his foot and pointing at his watch. Since the bandit raid on Springfield he’d only had a little contact with Marlene, and hadn’t heard at all from Joel or Tess. When Gregory had hauled him through the forests, he’d told stories of his little camp, of his daughter, of his son, of his daughter-in-law, and it kept Tommy conscious. He still wasn’t sure how Gregory had carried him so far. He’d sent word to Marlene of course, but her reply had been terse, brought by a messenger and left at the Springfield drop off almost four months after Tommy was supposed to be back in Chicago.

_Wait there._

Her chessboard wasn’t ready for him. So he waited, in the pine forest, with Gregory’s people. He let Maria tend to his leg. He hunted with her brother, Ollie, and like the others he watched Veronica’s stomach swell with a growing sense of worry. Gregory didn’t speak much about his impending grandchild. He just worried over the kids he still had.

“You can’t leave before Maria gets back,” Gregory said softly.

“There’s no way I would,” Tommy assured him. Still, he knew his chessmaster might have other ideas. Pawns couldn’t get too close to one another.

His heart was tripping so fast he almost fell over his feet as he made his way through the camp. The ‘square’, such as it was, was outside the most robust building. It had been an old warden’s hut, a place for the park rangers to make coffee and shelter. The tents had sort of spiralled out from there, leaving a place where they lit bonfires and set up benches.

Tommy quickly scanned the area, wondered for a moment if Joel would be in the shack, when Veronica caught sight of him and waved. “Tommy, your guest is here,” she sung out, rubbing one hand over her stomach.

The man sitting beside her, making free with the broth, was not Joel. For some reason it sunk Tommy’s heart. He slowed his pace as he approached. “You’re from Marlene?” he asked of the young man. He was a teenager, really. What business did Marlene have sending a kid this young out there?

“Uh huh,” the kid muttered, stuffing broth in his face. How old would this kid have been when it all happened? How long had it been? “She says you should meet her in St Louis.”

Veronica laughed, tossing back her pretty dark curls. “That’s like the song, huh? Meet me at the fair!”

“Never heard it,” the kid snorted and kept shovelling soup in his mouth.

“Did you come from there?” Tommy asked. The kid had to have been six or seven, maybe, when the outbreak happened.

“Uh huh. Plan’s to go to Colorado I think. The guard have pretty much pulled out of there.”

Without warning Veronica doubled over, clutching for Tommy’s hand. “Oooh.”

“Hey there, hey there,” he said, helped her to the bench. “You’ve been on your feet for too long, Veronica, we told you about that.” He kicked at the messenger. “Go find the tall bloke, Ollie. Ask for him if you can’t find him, you hear me?”

Veronica had a hold of his hand now and was squeezing so hard his knuckles were cracking. The kid was barely off his ass and still clinging to his soup bowl.

“Now! Damn it!” Tommy swore at him. “Veronica, is it time, is it now?”

“Mmm.” In small increments, Veronica began to relax. She shook her head. “No. No honey. It’s okay.” She tried to pat his face but ended up clinging to him for another wave.

“Veronica!” The kid had done his job and found Ollie. Tommy gladly relinquished the role of comforter to her husband, stepping back and wiping his hand off on the back of his jeans. The couple huddled together, heads bowed.

Tommy turned and quick marched to his tent. He had packing to do. Not a lot but packing. There were miles between him and St Louis and that fair. Miles between him and Marlene. Miles between him and the last kid, the last brother, the last family. He ducked into his tent and scrabbled with the sleeping bag, searching for his shirt and the hunting knife he never needed up on the wall.

His hand closed around a thin white tank, worn through at the hem, stained yellow in places. It couldn’t have been his. He sagged down on his ankles, resisted the urge to raise it to his face. He’d only done that in the nights she’d been gone, wondering at how she could smell good even when soap was a luxury. Pheromones, she’d told him one night.

Maria. Was he really going to chase after Marlene before saying goodbye to Maria?

He raised the top to his lips, inhaled, wished the smell was stronger, and tucked it back underneath his pillow. He would pack tomorrow. When his head was clear.

 

They fed the kid and found him a tent to sleep in – it was a silly flower patterned kid’s tent, one of their spares. The kid would be cold but that’s what the blankets were for. They ate together by the fire. Gregory sat beside him with hands cupped around a beaker of tea, but he spent most of his night watching his son and daughter-in-law. “You don’t see babies anymore,” Gregory said as most of the others began peeling off, heading for their sleeping bags and their tents. “You see a baby and you stop. It’s unusual, you know? Seems like it shouldn’t be. We all still fuck.”

Tommy glanced at his hands.

“I wonder, what do the women do, huh? Back in my day we menfolk weren’t great on pulling out. Did we all get better at it? Do they have pharmacies they go to?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy admitted. He’d never asked.

“Do the babies just . . . fall away? Maybe they just can’t live here. It’s too hard for them.”

“Maybe,” Tommy agreed. Veronica and Ollie had long since gone to bed.

“The militia can’t keep people safe. The Fireflies, your witch, they want the government. Do they forget the government were the ones who hid from us? Back when it was all happening?” Gregory tossed the remains of his tea into the fire. “The world’s too big now. We can’t just pick up the phone anymore. It’s just the people you know. That’s all you get.”

Tommy said nothing, staring into the flames.

“I want to move us. All of us. We’ll maybe need to wait for the baby, but we can wait a little while. Let the Fireflies forget about us. There’s a place for you where we’re going, Tommy.”

“Yeah but that place is only there if I follow the rules, right?” Tommy dragged a hand through his hair.

“Yeah. You leave the Fireflies. You leave the witch.”

“I have a brother,” Tommy said. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“Once, Maria made mention of it too.” Gregory frowned at him. “The brother can come too.”

The thought was almost hysterical, Tommy had to bit his lip but it didn’t stop the tears forming in his eyes. “We’re not like you guys. We talk through other people.”

“Well.” Gregory heaved himself to his feet and stretched. “You got time to think about it.”

Alone by the bonfire, Tommy leaned closer to the heat. This far from Marlene it was easy to forget her words. He’d only need to find a radio to remind him. And he was well known in the camp for his aversion to those frequent Firefly broadcasts. He held his hands out to the fire, watching the flicker of the orange glow over the silvery scars that laced his fingers. He had no place here.

A dog barked at the far side of the camp. He raised his head, waiting for the shout of the lookouts. Infected! Militia! Hell they might even shout Firefly! The shout never came, the dog quietened, and Tommy found himself staring again at the fire. Marlene would tell him he was being stupid. That a society needed order. Need things like elections, like democracy, like leaders. Not leaders like Gregory, men who just had respect from the way they walked and talked, but leaders who had authority. Marlene would say their little society would crumble without these things, that anything else was just a happy thought.

She would sound reasonable. He’d find himself agreeing even as he played the sceptic. He’d volunteer for another mission, and once again find himself on the side of the chessboard until she was ready for him.

But he’d see Joel. Rarely, wondering often if his brother was alive or dead, but Joel was the kind of man Gregory would never countenance. There was a reason Gregory’s family wasn’t like Tommy’s.

What would have become of Gregory if his daughter had been gunned down by the militia? What would become of Ollie if Veronica and the baby died on a bloody bed? Would this family break down too?

A pair of hands rested on his shoulder, the footsteps covered by the crackling of the bonfire. The hands slid down his chest, a chin rested on his shoulder, and a familiar smell enveloped him. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

He closed his eyes. “Waited up for you of course.”

Maria huffed with soft laughter, creeping around to sit by his side, leaning against his shoulder with a bone weariness that kept him from asking what had kept her out there so long. Instead he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and half carried her back to the tent. He took off her boots and her jeans and her jacket and wrapped her up in their joined up sleeping bags. He crawled in with her and was asleep before he could even think about the kid and his message from Marlene.

 

The next day he picked over the spoils of Maria’s trek with the others in the camp, skinning the deer and sorting scavenged clothes. The kid Marlene sent helped them, Maria didn’t mention him. The first day of her return was spent catching up, telling tales, feeling Veronica’s baby move under her skin.

The second day Maria smiled with delight when he showed her how his leg was doing, the third day Gregory cracked out the moonshine and they celebrated a day ending in ‘y’, the fourth day they stayed in their tent too long and the fifth day Marlene’s kid said thank you for the soup.

And on the sixth day, Veronica started to scream.

The whole camp moved as one, hurrying to the sounds in the ranger’s shack. Maria grabbed her brother by the arm and held his gaze. “Listen to me. We need hot water and as much clean linen as you can find, do you understand me? That is the most important thing you can do right night. You and dad. Clean, hot water. Clean the pans first, you hear me?”

Her brother was nodding and Tommy made to help before Maria ordered him inside the shack. “Shouldn’t I get the water?” he asked.

“I ain’t saying the water’s not useful,” Maria muttered, kneeling on the cot beside Veronica. She looked up at him with wide eyes and tight lips, “but I need you here right now. We might need a bit of strength.”

Not all the women of the camp joined them. Veronica’s friend Cassidy, the old woman who’d been a vet nurse, and Maria. Veronica crouched on the bed huffing and groaning, her brows already slick with sweat.

“Only a few fingers, sweetie,” Cassidy said to her, rubbing her back. “No pushing just yet.”

“God it hurts,” Veronica hissed, her pretty, swollen face screwed up with pain.

Tommy’s throat was parched. He leaned closer to Cassidy. “Why no pushing?”

Cassidy gave him a pitying smile. “Because a baby’s head is ten fingers, not four.”

The women seemed to him like ghastly spectres, lingering around Veronica as she struggled through her pain, there with helpless pats on the back or brushing the hair from her forehead. It seemed like it went on for an aeon, and Tommy lit candles and the brazier as the light faded from the windows. Maria called him over to a corner and leaned closer to him, “At some point she’s going to call for Ollie. She said she wouldn’t want him but she will. When she does, go get him, then wait outside. Listen for me calling on you, okay?”

“Is it bad?”

Maria looked up at him, her shoulders lifting and falling. “What I wouldn’t give for a gynaecologist. I don’t know how Ollie will take it.”

He clutched at her fingers, squeezing tightly. Maria seemed to take no comfort in it and returned to her sister-in-law. Sure enough, as the women seemed to energise, Veronica cried out for her husband and Tommy fled to find him. He found himself outside, standing in the cold, listening to what only sounded like torture. Gregory joined him with moonshine and they waited. Tommy wondered if the baby would cry with morning’s light, that seemed poetic. He wondered if, instead, they’d hear Olli wail.

He wondered if Maria would hold her little niece in her arms, and weep like he did, if she would stay strong for her brother, like he did.

He could leave tomorrow. He could leave tonight. He could leave now.

Gregory passed him the jar of potato booze and he took a sip, feeling it burn in his throat.

He could stay forever.

The door opened, the boards creaking as Cassidy stood in the doorway. She extended a bloody hand for the jar and Tommy handed it over, feeling the tears beginning to flow.

“It’s a girl,” Cassidy said, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Tommy’s face. “Stop shitting yourselves, guys, everything’s fine.” She shoved the jar back at Tommy and jerked her head at Gregory. “She wants to see you.”

While Tommy gaped, Gregory wiped his cheeks and stumbled on the stoop as he tried to reach his daughter-in-law. Cassidy was laughing, though she was crying too, and she hugged him while he was still stunned. “I think it’s gonna be okay,” she whispered in his ear as he hugged her back, his arms as unfeeling as his brain.

“Hey there,” Maria whispered, and Cassidy released him, patting his cheek and stealing his jar as she walked away.

Maria gave him her weariest smile and while his brain still stalled, his heart knew how to direct his arms around her shoulders and his feet knew how to lead her away to the picnic site, where they sat side by side, leaning against the table, barely able to see each others’ in the dark. “She’s so tiny,” Maria whispered. “I could hold her in both hands. She made this little squeak when she came out, and she looked up at Ollie, and I swear to God she saw him. He just picked her up, blood and all, my brother who still looks away when he skins a squirrel. I don’t even know how someone can love something so much.”

“I don’t know how you lose it,” Tommy said, squeezing his arm tighter around her shoulders.

“Yeah.” Maria’s whisper was more of a croak.

He could feel the tightness in his chest crank one notch closer. “I need to go to Marlene,” he said, his voice surprisingly steady. Under his arm, Maria tensed. “There are things I need from her.”

“Fuck. Marlene.”

“I need protection.” He slid down from the seat onto his knees, holding Maria’s hands in the blackness. “For us. For all of us. For Ollie and Veronica and the baby. So she doesn’t come for us. I can do that.”

“For us?” Maria sounded so shaky and small. She had a niece now. He knew how vulnerable it could make you.

He knew how it would make you fight.

“For all of us, baby.”

“Okay.” She rested her forehead against his. “Okay.”


End file.
